In Agnes of God, Mother Miriam Ruth is the face of organized religion. She is the head of the convent where Agnes lives and—since the male priests are not depicted in the play—represents the institutional authority of the Catholic Church. In this respect, she is more than just a nun; as the head of an order of nuns, she balances the traditionally patriarchal biases of the Catholic Church with a degree of female authority. 

Developing this point, Mother Miriam’s characterization challenges preconceptions about the Church and its representatives. In spite of her power and authority, she first appears easing the tension with a joke. She greets Dr. Livingstone by making a reference to Scottish explorer Dr. David Livingstone and then laughs at her own joke. Given the seriousness of the situation and Dr. Livingstone’s antagonistic attitude toward religion, the joke sets a tone for the dynamic between the two women and shows Mother Miriam’s emotional intelligence. Unlike the nuns at Dr. Livingstone’s Catholic school, Mother Miriam does not treat death with callous appeals to divine authority. She follows up her joke by discussing the strangeness of being referred to as “Mother” by people who are not nuns, acknowledging that it “forces a familiarity that most are not willing to accept” (8). Mother Miriam thus presents herself to Dr. Livingstone as a caring, understanding, and empathetic person, a far cry from the severity of the organized religion which Dr. Livingstone dislikes so intensely.

Mother Miriam’s empathetic nature also helps to explain why she does so much to guard Agnes from external scrutiny. She is fiercely protective of Agnes. Miriam wishes to protect the reputation of her organization, but her primary concern is for Agnes as an individual. She acts as a shield between Dr. Livingstone and Agnes, filtering out many of the most invasive and probing questions. In doing so, she hides many of the facts about their relationship. She does not mention the ruined sheets found in Agnes’s room, nor that she is Agnes’s aunt. While the play suggests that Mother Miriam withholds this information because she is afraid that the cruel, inhumane world will not treat Agnes with kindness and respect, it lends a degree of moral ambivalence to her character. 

As well as the potential murder charge, Mother Miriam is concerned with Agnes’s spiritual state and its implications. In her discussions with Dr. Livingstone, Mother Miriam hints at her belief that Agnes is particularly “blessed” and hints at the possibility that Agnes’s baby was conceived via miracle (rather than abuse or assault); she also mentions the signs of the stigmata that Agnes has shown in the past. If these were more widely known, Mother Miriam believes, then Agnes may become the focus of an intense media scrutiny. This shows that her loyalty is, first and foremost, to Agnes. Her empathy is such that she is willing to hide a miracle from the world because she fears that the world would have a negative effect on Agnes. Mother Miriam’s desire to protect Agnes is thus a stronger motivation than her institutional loyalty to the state, the church, or the convent.

Unlike Dr. Livingstone, Mother Miriam notes, she knows what it means to be a mother, having been married before taking her vows. Much of Miriam’s desire to protect Agnes springs from maternal instinct, implicitly heightened by guilt over failure to intervene in Agnes’s abuse and grief over her own children’s rejection of her following her conversion. Since she was not able to protect Agnes, however, Mother Miriam feels that she has failed in her duty yet again. Her desire to protect Agnes and to shield her springs from this sense of failure, yet her inability to deny the truth results in yet another failure. Her last scene in the play involves her bitterly lamenting that Dr. Livingstone has stripped away her illusions of Agnes’s innocence. Where Dr. Livingstone’s arc sees her move tentatively toward belief, Mother Miriam’s takes her in the opposite direction. Her disappointment with Agnes, in whom she has invested so much, shakes her faith.